2018 Customer Experience Vendor Excellence Awards

Temkin Group Customer Experience (CX) Vendor Excellence Awards recognizes any type of vendor (software company, research firm, consultant, etc.) that helps its clients deliver great customer experience. We are currently accepting nominations.

Nominations are due by March 8

The awards are based on the following criteria:

Capabilities. What products and/or services do you offer that are uniquely able to help companies improve their customer experience?

Results. How have you helped companies improve their customer experience and overall business results?

References. What do three to five clients say about your work?

2018 Judges: The nominations will be evaluated by the following expert panel of judges who understand how a good vendor can help organizations become more customer-centric:

Mike Beaser is Vice President, Digital Customer Engagement at Fidelity Investments. He has had several customer experience roles within Fidelity, and is currently focused on creating better awareness of service opportunities, and delivering better self-service experiences for customers.

Karyn Furstman, CCXP has 25+ years delivering driving change in Fortune 500 companies across many industries, and is a past Chair of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA). In her most recent role, she led Agent & Customer Experience,Lean & Six Sigma Process Improvement, and Training Executive at Safeco Insurance.

Carolyn Muise is a customer experience change agent, having recently led the Voice of the Customer Analytics and Intelligence platform for Dell. Previously she led EMC’s Total Customer Experience Program.

Jen Rodstrom, CCXP is CX Transformist for Temkin Group. She has over a decade of experience in customer insights and market research.

Bruce Temkin, CCXP is CX Transformist & Managing Partner of Temkin Group. He is widely recognized as a customer experience visionary and is Emeritus Chair and co-founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA.org).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How much does it cost to apply? Nothing. We do not charge any fees to submit a nomination and we do not collect anything from finalists and winners. In other words, this process is totally free.

Is this award only for software vendors? No. Any consultant, software provider, or service provider of any sort that helps companies improve their customer experience is eligible.

Is this award only for vendors who support consumer-based businesses? No. This award is not only for work with business-to-consumer businesses, we also expect many applicants from vendors who support business-to-business clients.

Is this a technology award? No, but… If a vendor uses a technology that really helps its clients deliver better customer experience, then it will be factored into the judging. But companies do not need to offer any technology to qualify for an award and we will not be doing any technology assessments.

We have a new offering that’s going to be fantastic, can we apply? Maybe. If your new offering augments great work that you’ve already been doing, then it makes sense to apply. If this is a brand new offering and your firm has not yet helped clients improve their customer experience, then it’s not worth applying. Take a look at the nomination form.

If we are one of the winners, will we be able to put out a press release? Yes. All of the finalists and award winners will be able to refer to this award in any communications.

Will there be more than one winner? Probably. We expect that there will be multiple winners, but we will determine the number based on the nominations.

Will you share our nomination forms publicly? We will share the answers to the first two questions from the finalists on the Customer Experience Matters blog.

Can we enter if we are not in the U.S.? Yes. This award is open for entrants from around the world. The only requirement is that the nomination form be completed in English.

Can we send in more than one nomination for a company? No. You should focus on one strong nomination.

Can we wait until we find out about getting to the next round before we send client references? No. Any nomination that is submitted without client references will not be considered.

Will you announce the applicants who did not win? We will only announce the applicants that are finalists and winners.

Will we be able to get feedback on our nomination from the judges? No. The comments and grades from individual judges will not be made public, so we will not be able to provide any feedback on your application.

Is this just for large vendors? No. Any company of any size can apply. But you still need to provide at least three customer references.

How much effort is there for our customer references? They will be asked to answer a short survey that they should be able to complete in 5 to 10 minutes.

What happens if we can not get the minimum three clients to complete your survey on time? It is your responsibility to prepare your reference clients to fill out our short survey during the award’s time window. Nominees will be penalized if we do not receive at least three completed reference surveys.

Will the clients in the Clients References section of the nomination form be contacted for verification purposes only? No, they will be asked a few questions about the vendor and its capabilities.

Can we (or our clients) see an advance copy of the survey questions? No. We do not provide the questions in advance. It’s a very short survey and we do not ask for any confidential information. Also, the results are only used by Temkin Group to develop an aggregate score. Their individual responses aren’t even shared with the other judges.

If clients are named in the case studies section, would that give nominees an edge? Anything that the nominees can do to make the value they deliver to clients more tangible will help. There is no explicit element of the scoring for having specific clients names in that section, but it may influence the judges.

Will the future direction/roadmap items (i.e. clients in case studies’ names) be shared publicly? No. Nothing below the “Company Information” and “Make the Case” sections of the form will be shared publicly. And we will only share those sections for finalists.

Will you sign an NDA form? No. We will not be signing confidentiality agreements, since we would not be in a position to enforce it with our judges. We will only publicly share the elements of the form as described on the form. All of the judges understand the sensitive nature of some information, but we can not guarantee confidentiality.